The EU-Citizen.Science project ran from January 2019 until December 2021 and was funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme under the Science with and for Society (also known as SwafS) work program.
The project’s Consortium, led by the MfN, consisted of 14 partners and 9 third parties from across 14 European countries. Together, we represented a wide range of stakeholders active in citizen science, including universities, non-governmental organisations, local authorities, community service organisations and museums.
Video above: Final video of the EU-Citizen.Science project
Our core mission was to become the European reference point for citizen science through cross-network knowledge sharing for citizen science participants, practitioners, researchers, policy makers and society across Europe.
The project’s objectives were multifaceted:
- establish EU-Citizen.Science as the knowledge and community hub for high-quality citizen science exchange and learning in Europe
- consolidate the citizen science knowledge base and celebrate outstanding practices and state of the art in citizen science in Europe
- empower diverse stakeholders to become citizen scientists, start citizen science initiatives, and implement citizen science approaches professionally.
- explore new pathways for participatory governance, by strengthening links between citizen science and policy making
- advance citizen science into the mainstream of public engagement, science communication and education
One of the main outcomes of the project is the EU-Citizen.Science platform, an online open-access knowledge hub for sharing knowledge, tools, training and resources for citizen science – by the community, for the community.
Figure above: Home page of the EU-Citizen.Science platform
The vision for the platform has been to serve in aid of the mainstreaming of citizen science, and build on the growing impact of citizens participating in research across the full range of scientific enquiry.
We have accomplished this goal by supporting the sharing of knowledge, know-how, and experience among all those who do or want to do citizen science. As of December 2021, the platform was visited by more than 54000 visitors and has built a community of more than 1700 registered users.
On the EU-Citizen.Science platform you can find:
- Projects that are engaging the public in research via citizen science activities
- Resources that are useful for citizen science practitioners
- Training resources and materials on citizen science as a practice
- Training modules on citizen science in a wide range of themes
- Organisations that are involved in citizen science projects and research
- Linked citizen science platforms
- Events calendar
- A blog
- Forums for questions, conversations, and collaboration with the rest of the community
Another major outcome of the EU-Citizen.Science project was related to citizen science and policy. Five Deliverables were published, providing insights on best practices and recommendations for raising awareness among stakeholders and policy-makers.
Furthermore, EU-Citizen.Science held a high-level policy event “Citizen Science for Policy Across Europe” on 22.6.2021 as a satellite event of the EC R&I days 2021. This event was curated by Mineco-FECYT, Ibercivis and MfN and received the support of the European Commission, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology and Higher Education and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. As a follow-up, a policy brief report was published and is available here.
Figure above: The logos of the project's partners